The Judgement of Paris: rise and fall of the gods

The scene of the Judgment of Paris as an example of the symbolic rise and fall of the gods on earth. The theme had already appeared in courtly art without the detail of the ascent of the gods. A number of archeological drawings from a Roman sarcophagus preserved in Villa Medici and representing the Judgment of Paris show different approaches to Antiquity: the gods are either yearning for their lost Olympian life, or for the hedonism of an earthly existence. Finally the gods, wandering en plein air, are fully humanized in Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe.